Charles Andre Martinet is a Mario game voice
actor.
Mario, Luigi, Wario, Waluigi, Baby Mario, Baby Luigi, Baby
Wario, Metal Mario, the male bosses in Super Mario Advance, and many more male
characters in the Mario series are all voiced by him. Martinet is fluent in
French, English, and Spanish.
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Martinet was born in San Jose, California, in the United
States of America, on September 17, 1955. He attended the University of
California, Berkeley. A friend advised him to attend
pursue acting to help him overcome his fear of public
speaking, during his senior year.
Martinet eventually found work as an apprentice at the
Berkeley Repertory Theatre. He moved to London to study at the Drama
Studio London, where he found his talent for accents and dialects, among other
skills.
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His first assignment at Nintendo was voicing the announcers,
boxers, and referees in Super Punch-Out!! for the Super Nintendo Entertainment
System. Martinet was not contacted to audition for the role of Mario at first.
He crashed the auditions and was instructed to do an Italian accent. His
recordings made such an impression that they were the only ones given to
the company.
Martinet’s first formal voice role as Mario was on the Super
Mario Bros. pinball machine in 1992, albeit he was uncredited. The next time he
played Mario, and the first time he played a variety of other characters, was
in 1994 for Mario in Real-Time, in which he wore motion sensors on his face
that translated his facial motions to a computer-generated Mario head on a
screen.
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Through a surveillance camera, Martinet observed people
passing past the screen and conversed with them as Mario. Mario in Real-Time
was reimagined in 1995’s Mario’s Game Gallery, the first video game in which
Mario was played by Charles Martinet.
